Youthful visions to reach big screen at Arnold festival

Friday

Mar 2, 2012 at 12:01 AMMar 2, 2012 at 9:16 AM

Julia Ott was speechless when she saw a TV commercial on Monday for the Arnold Sports Film Festival this weekend in Columbus. The 15-year-old sophomore at Franklin Heights High School, who goes by "Bella," said that's when it hit her that a film she helped produce would be seen by hundreds of people.

Josh Jarman, The Columbus Dispatch

Julia Ott was speechless when she saw a TV commercial on Monday for the Arnold Sports Film Festival this weekend in Columbus.

The 15-year-old sophomore at Franklin Heights High School, who goes by “Bella,” said that’s when it hit her that a film she helped produce would be seen by hundreds of people.

My film is going to be there, she remembered thinking. “It was indescribable.”

Ott is one of dozens of central Ohio high-school students who will see their visions come alive today on the big screen at the Arena Grand Movie Theatre during the film festival, now in its second year.

Jim Hern, the event’s organizer, said many independent filmmakers toil in obscurity for years before getting their work in front of an industry professional. The high-school students whose films were selected get to jump-start that process.

“Arnold actually sees their films during the final screenings,” Hern said. “It would be great to have the next big Hollywood director come from Columbus, Ohio.”

The films must focus on athletic endeavor, and the high-school students have used that broad canvas to tell stories about subjects such as individual athletes, sporting trends and a program that builds confidence in special-needs students through horseback riding. A common theme during the past two years has been athletes overcoming adversity, Hern said.

Marianna Stephens, 15, worked with Ott at Franklin Heights on a film about one of Stephens’ friends, 16-year-old Mary Butler-Wion, who runs track. Stephens said she chose Butler-Wion because, with her often multicolored hair and alternative-clothing style, she doesn’t fit the stereotype of a student-athlete.

“They always say our school has a lot of diversity — that not everyone looks and acts the same — and you can see that in our video,” Stephens said.

Almost half of the 18 films that made the cut for the festival were directed and produced by students from Upper Arlington High School, where Amanda Fountain teaches a broadcasting class.

The festival is an important opportunity to let students put their class work into practice, she said. “It forces the students to think about what they learned in class and then utilize it.”

Katie Kapusta and Taylor Grow, both 17-year-old juniors in Fountain’s class, worked together on a video about rollerblading. They said the experience taught them how important planning is and also how lucky they are to have the facilities their school provides, including a TV production studio.

“To be honest, I probably took it for granted,” Grow said. “I learned a lot from this video."

Vinny Bonta, 17, a junior in Fountain’s class, said working on a film about longboarding, which is a type of skateboarding that focuses on racing down hills rather than performing tricks, taught him more about how the components of a film fit together than he had learned in class.

“Having the interviews tell a story in the video was probably the biggest thing I learned,” he said.

Two of the films in the festival were produced by students of Tom Gregory, the TV-production teacher at Gahanna Lincoln High School.

They worked on their own time to plan, shoot and edit the films, he said. “The students weren’t getting anything extra out of it from me, but they really were getting a lot out of it because of the opportunity.”

The contest also helps students see whether they might want to pursue filmmaking as a career, Gregory said.

Colin Hopkins, 18, of Grove City, was last year’s high-school-division winner. He said winning the Arnold gave him the confidence to pursue his dream of working in a creative field, and he’s now attending classes at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.

Future film-festival entrants should focus on what they’re passionate about, Hopkins said. “In high school, it’s easy to do what’s accepted, but this is a creative industry. You have to have a vision and follow it, and trust yourself.”